a misty forgotten
by angels entwined
Summary: She's forgotten. She's forgotten bits and pieces, all the bits and pieces that matter, and she doesn't know if she'll get everything back. \ Finnick, Annie, and remembering. For Johanna!


_**Title:** A Misty Forgotten_

_**Summary:** She's forgotten. She's forgotten bits and pieces, all the bits and pieces that matter, and she doesn't know if she'll get everything back._

_**Notes:** For my co-ruler of the world, Johanna (clockwatching), and also for the Caesar's Palace April Oneshot challenge. Happy birthday, dear Cheerio-obsessor._

_I also know that despite this being an Odesta fic, we actually see very little of Finnick. This is more about Annie's journey to insanity and back (okay, sort of), and Finnick's role, than their actual love._

_And I don't go through Annie's pre-Games, but it's really exactly what Collins said it was. Bit of me toying around with exactly what happened to Annie because of her madness, I suppose, but nothing AU that I know of._

_**Disclaimer:** I own nothing._

* * *

When the girl sees the axe swing through the air, the tiniest bit of hope her district partner will survive flickers frantically within her.

When the cannon booms, she barely hears it. She simply sees the world blur, and then images flash before her. The waves that lap at her feet in District Four, bloodlust in the tributes' eyes, and her mentor. _You can do it,_ he told her, right before she entered the bloodbath.

She's being crushed, she thinks. She knows she's screaming, but she hears only laughter — first the gentle laugh of her mother, then the giggles of the girls who gossip about her at school, then something cruel, coldly amused. Finally, when it stops, her ears are ringing and she can't identify the hysterical laughing coming from her own mouth.

(They run, because they see it in her eyes, and she doesn't yet.)

It's nightfall. That's odd; she could have sworn it was sunset. But suddenly, the sky is dotted with stars, and a face flashes up there, murky in the clouds. Blood drips from her body, the blood of both her district partner and herself.

Her ears are still ringing as she falls.

* * *

She wakes up in a gleaming white room, and a person with lavender corkscrew curls and a clipboard in her hands comes in. The door makes a smooth sound as it slides open, something familiar. (The sound of the dam breaking too smoothly to be realistic.)

She doesn't remember much of what the person says. She's a hospital assistant, apparently. Now, the tribute is a victor, and all she can think is, _damn, I didn't see that one coming._ Because _her,_ the Career who can barely handle weapons, winning? Ridiculous.

She won because she was good at swimming, Lavender Hair says. The victor doesn't remember any of this, and Lavender Hair claims she has a concussion when she hit her head against the dam when it flooded. The Capitolites are working on fixing it. But the girl only feels as if she's drowning in the mist of her memories, and nothing can fix that.

But oh, yes, she thinks. She _does_ remember the flood, and she laughs. That's not swimming; swimming is graceful strokes and feeling the water caress your skin. She remembers being tossed around the waves like a rag doll as lightning flashed and cannons boomed one after another. She remembers being swept away, unable to do anything.

(She isn't sure she would have done anything.)

Someone hits a button, saying she still has healing to do, and she loses consciousness.

* * *

The next time she wakes up, her memory is only partly fixed. A boy comes in (but he doesn't look like a boy, he's too tired-looking), someone with bronze hair and eyes the color of the sea. He tells her his name is Finnick Odair, and he's her mentor, and — and —

He falters, and she doesn't know what he meant to say. She thanks him for being her mentor, but there's something strange stirring inside her. She can't recognize it, but she doesn't want to deal with it right now, so she chats a bit more with Finnick. There's certainly something familiar about him, maybe a little too familiar.

The feeling only gets stronger.

When he leaves, he looks as if he's lost all hope, or at least whatever he had before. For what, she doesn't know, and asks Lavender Hair (who she learns is named Calli) about why he's acting this way.

She pauses, looking reluctant, but Annie's eyes are fixed expectantly on her. She isn't backing down. Calli says, "You have worse than a concussion. You've gone insane."

The victor exhales. Then inhales too quickly. Calli sees her breathing rate is far too fast — Annie's having a panic attack, and now the assistant lunges toward the button that will release morphling into her bloodstream. Her condition must be worsening.

(It's more than worsening.)

The girl grabs Calli's wrist before the button is pushed. She looks like a wild animal, with huge eyes and dark hair falling in tangles around her face. Her skin is pale and her nails dig into the assistant's wrist so hard, drops of red leak out. A cry of pain sounds throughout the room as both girls pause, paralyzed, one in horror, the other in fear.

Annie says _nonono,_ tears blurring her vision. She suddenly feels as if the world has tilted sideways, because this is _wrong_ and everyone will look at her as if. . .she's going to lose it (and maybe she will, and she hates herself for that).

Calli swallows, prying off those stone cold fingers from her wrist and backing away. This victor scares her, not because she has the blood of twenty-three others on her hands, but because she is wild and unstable. She is already nothing more than that to the Capitolite.

A few minutes pass as the victor tries to calm down, and then she finally looks up. "Finnick?"

"You. . .you didn't like him," the assistant says. Her words are hurried, spilling out of her mouth like coins in a broken piggy bank. "You just didn't get along, and now he feels guilty because of it—"

(She feels nothing as she says this. She likes to think it's true.)

The brown-haired girl can't remember this, but then again, she can't remember Finnick at all. She doesn't care, though. Why should she? People are already treating her differently because of her condition. She probably isn't even regarded as a proper victor.

This time, she hits the morphling button herself.

* * *

She returns to District Four, and her prediction more or less comes true. Her friends can't look at her (that is, if she had that many to begin with), and her family refuses to live with her in the Victor's Village. It stings, but her world is a little too hazy to really acknowledge it. She's sinking fast into insanity. It can't be fixed, says the Capitol hospitals.

She's expecting that. The half-hope she felt during the Games has long since dissolved.

Perhaps at some time, she would have given up and let life as a victor swallow her. But she's too far in, and she can't feel anything, not even the numbness the morphling addicts feel. She isn't even there anymore.

She's never given a Victory Tour — her letter informing why claims she's a public menace. The girl (no, not just a girl anymore, she decides) couldn't care less. At some point, she tries to fight the insanity, but that night of stars and clouds and blood snapped something deep and vital inside her, and she's falling. She can't hold onto air.

It's a long, long fall.

One day, she finds out her family is dead in an "accident." She cries that day, and it's the only truly real crying she'll experience in a long time.

She stumbles that night and watches the droplets of blood speck her skin in eerie fascination. Even the mad aren't exempt from being human.

(She doesn't feel human, though.)

* * *

The boy comes to visit her one day, except she's not herself. She never is. Something inside her speaks for her, feels for her, but she's a fallen victor. She isn't trapped inside the Capitol, though — she's trapped inside herself. She feels like speaking is screaming at someone a thousand miles higher than her.

(She doesn't realize that's enviable.)

"Do you hate me?" he asks, and she thinks_ yes,_ but that's only a faint whisper in her consciousness. He's perfect — rich, attractive, and a victor. A happy victor. The enviable can be envious as well.

She doesn't answer. Well, not her, really.

He looks as if his heart is bleeding, and she wonders why he cares.

"I thought you might," he says quietly. "Because I couldn't help you in the Games. I thought. . .I thought you might love your district partner, and that was why you went. . ."

He stops and leaves, a single tear slipping from his eye. (That is not Finnick Odair, powerful, flirtatious, eternally charming.)

She's confused — the words that have sprung from his lips make no sense. She can't make sense of what's going on. Having to think is killing her.

* * *

One day, she travels back to the Capitol. She isn't sure why, but the insanity lurking inside her tells her that there are too many memories in District Four. She agrees. The mist isn't quite so misty anymore; things are clearing up, and none of them are good things. Why doesn't she have any good memories?

(They're the ones most easily hidden.)

Annie doesn't feel quite so human — she feels as if the world is a long, long distance away, and she's some manifestation of nothingness. There's no pain; she's fallen, and whatever shows it isn't something she's really aware of.

She decides to visit Calli, even though she doesn't particularly like her. But the Capitol is strange and too bright and unfamiliar; it gives her a pounding headache, and she wants to see someone she knows. She can take a bit of lavender hair. She can't take the glaring lights and the glitter and the smiles that outshine the stars, and not in a good way. Outshining stars isn't natural.

She finds out Calli's address and takes a taxi to her house — really, victors don't ride limos around _everywhere._ It's not the magnificent, glittering palace that appears in so many places, but a three-story that's still quite impressive anyway. It's bigger than most of the houses in the Victor's Village, and she thinks that's because in the end, the Capitol will always be worth more than the districts.

The victor knocks on the door once, twice, three times. No one answers, and there's a surprising lack of security, so she simply opens the door and walks in.

Calli's name is called out, but yet again, there isn't an answer. Annie turns and looks around, but not one person is in sight. She thinks that there would at least be Avoxes. (There are. She doesn't realize everything's too blurred for her to see anything.)

The girl goes upstairs, thinking Calli would be in her bedroom. It's early afternoon, and Capitolites wake up late. Perhaps she's still asleep. Sighing, she opens the nearest door —

— and screams.

For one split second, she feels in control. Everything is sharp and clear as she sees two people lying in bed, the blinds closed. One is moaning softly in pleasure; Calli, whose hair is now magenta, but still recognizable. The other is Finnick, so cloaked in shadows she can't see his expression.

She blinks, and everything blurs again.

And she laughs.

* * *

This isn't something she can process. She remembers mist, as the boy stares at her and Calli is shrieking and the look of horror on the boy's face. And _why,_ she'd wanted to know, and he said _this is wrong, don't you know that?_

And he stared at her because _she didn't remember him properly_ and_ you don't know?_

He left, and Calli collapsed on the bed, tangled in her sheets. She looked as broken as Finnick did, and now, Annie almost feels pity for her.

(Instead, she spat on her. She doesn't like deception.)

She writes it down over and over again, her scrawl untidy, her actions mechanical.

_Calli has deceived me. Finnick and I were in love before the Games. Calli wanted him all to herself. Finnick has been forced into prostitution and that is why he was with Calli. Finnick thinks I hate him because he couldn't help me in the Games._ (She knows how unreasonable that is, but she senses he's used to it.)

She doesn't know what to do. She only knows she's made a mistake.

* * *

She calls him and asks him to come to her house. She feels dazed, but she's. . .she's in control.

It's even more confusing than before, because she lapses in and out of reality, but she can live with it. While she waits for him, she considers her situation. Even as it makes her head pound and the insanity claw at her insides, she thinks as clearly as she can.

She tries to find the love the boy says she had for him, or at least the affection he thought she had. She tries to imagine teetering on edge before the Games, wondering who loved who and what they'd do about it.

She doesn't feel that. Instead, she feels the tiniest bit of hope flickering inside her again. This time, it is steady as she waits.

And the boy comes; he speaks to her and brings her to places they remember together, and things come surging back. Things are not perfect, but she is in reality more of the time now.

She remembers love, and risk, and feeling so raw and alive it can devour her. But she won't let it devour her. She lets herself remember.

And it aches (heartache), just as if someone has stabbed her, but acknowledging that is the first step, isn't it?

She can still bleed. She's still human, and it's not too late.


End file.
